Hello and welcome. I appreciate you tuning into another episode of The Beneath Your Stutter podcast. Today I'm sharing with you the seven freedom fluency factors. It's a framework that illustrates what influences variable. Or what is also known as situational stuttering. In this episode, we're going to dive into each of the seven fluency factors, what they are and why they're important.
An illustrated example of how these factors work together, and a simple set of questions you can start to use yourself to uncover what is going on behind your own speaking situations when you experience variable stuttering. I'm so excited to share this episode with you. Let's start.
Let me begin by saying that stuttering is as unique as your fingerprints like a snowflake. Every person who stutters does so in a way that is unique to them. Even though there might be similarities, no two people stutter in the exact same way, or more importantly for the exact same reasons. It's these differences that influence your speech to create variable fluency moment to moment.
Stuttering is not a static disorder. It is dynamic and can fluctuate from day to day, and this is because you are dynamic and not a static being. Your feelings and thoughts fluctuate from day to day, and so your stutter fluctuates from day to day as well. One day you might have good fluency and then the next day you struggle to get the words out.
I remember how frustrating this used to be because you never knew what your speech would sound like from day to day or even from one situation to the next. This unpredictability is nerve wracking. You might always feel on guard and hypervigilant to not stutter.
I know only too well this feeling, this knowing. When you're going to stutter, it brings uncomfortable feelings of being out of control, which only makes you try even harder trying to get back control. If your self-esteem is attached to how fluent you are on any given day, you will pass judgment on whether you're having a good speech day or a bad speech day.
Either way, your self-esteem will either be pumped up or deflated. So let's explore what's behind this.
For the last few years, I've worked passionately to understand stuttering on a much deeper level. Through my own firsthand experience with stuttering research and intensive study, I've identified several factors that play a part in the experience of stuttering. I call these the seven freedom fluency factors, which are.
Working beneath the surface of your stutter to contribute to covert and variable fluency. Imagine a wheel or a pie, and each factor is the spoke or wedge that makes up the whole. These factors are temperament, environment, relationships, thoughts, feelings, body, and behavior. All of these factors work together to influence your overall health and wellbeing, your self-esteem and self-expression.
When you know these factors, then you can have the clarity for self-awareness, making new choices, and taking different steps to boost your speaking confidence. Okay, let's begin. The first factor is temperament. Do you find yourself to be cautious or hold back? Do you prefer to be introspective? Do you have high standards and hate making mistakes? There is nothing wrong with any of these attributes. It just might be part of your inborn nature. I hesitate to suggest that there is a stuttering personality, but by observing myself and working one-on-one with clients, I've come to see three personality traits that tends to play a role in stuttering.
Of course, these traits exist on a spectrum and range at various degrees for each person. The first trait is sensitivity. approximately 15 to 20% of the population exhibits varying levels of sensitivity. Being highly sensitive is an inborn trait that is hardwired into the nervous system.
Hardwired meaning it's deeply part of your biological makeup and not something you can just talk yourself out of. If you're a sensitive individual, your heightened level of sensory information leads to deeper emotional experiences. You may find certain speaking situations and the emotions associated with them, overstimulating and overwhelming.
You might feel as if you're drowning and everything is too much. Please understand there is nothing weak or wrong about being a highly sensitive person. It just means that emotional and sensory overload can affect your fluency leading to stuttering. The second trait is introversion. Introverts comprise an estimated 25 to 40% of the general population.
Once again, an introvert's brain is also wired differently, meaning they operate with a different nervous system than extroverts. This type of temperament runs on an energy conserving nervous system. What this means is that if you're an introvert, you might find yourself having limited energy or desire for socializing.
You might prefer to spend time alone or only with a small group of close friends and family. You might feel very uncomfortable when introducing yourself or giving presentations. Such situations require an individual to project themselves outward into the world, which can be very challenging for introverts.
And if you feel uncomfortable, you feel forced and pressure to be more extroverted than you naturally are. This can also affect your fluency. The third trade is perfectionism. approximately 30% of the general population displays perfectionistic tendencies.
Perfectionism is the desire to appear or to be perfect. Perfectionism is tricky as it can be both perceived as a positive or a negative trait. In a positive light with perfectionism, you may have high standards for yourself and want to present the best side of yourself to others. This can be very beneficial in achieving desired results as this is rewarded in our society and can take you far in other areas of your life, such as your career.
In a negative light, perfectionism tends to be more of a safety behavior, especially when it comes to stuttering. You believe that if you present yourself as perfect and fluent, then you'll be safe from criticism and rejection. That might come from peers, parents, teachers, or authority figures. You use perfectionism as a self-protective shield for the exact reason that you have most likely been socially and publicly criticized and rejected for stuttering in the past.
It's normal and common to use perfectionism as a coverup for hiding, for fear of being perceived as less than others due to stuttering. One way that perfectionism shows up is in our over prepping before any speaking engagement, getting ready to speak as fluently as possible. Or even not speaking to keep up the illusion of fluency. At some point, you picked up the covert or overt message that it was not okay to stutter. So all of this prepping and hiding is done to avoid making any stutter mistakes in your speech.
It's important to acknowledge these temperament traits within yourself. If this resonates with you, this allows you to embrace your nature and to start working with it instead of against it. By acknowledging and appreciating the role of sensitivity, introversion, and perfectionism, you start to give yourself permission to be you, which leads to genuine self-acceptance.
The second factor is environment. Let me ask you this. Do certain people, places, or objects tend to make you stutter more? For instance, do you stutter more in these situations around an authority figure on a job interview or even when talking on the phone? If so, you are experiencing triggers in your environment. So what are triggers? Triggers are anything that evokes an automatic and emotional reaction. It can be words, persons, events, or experiences.
These triggered reactions might leave you feeling unsettled, nervous filled with dread, fear, and anxiety. These reactions can happen anytime, anywhere, but for most people, you're either at home, school or at work. So at home you may find yourself stuttering more around certain family members. Maybe it's your parents or maybe another relative or friend.
Or maybe your speech is fine at home, but you find yourself stuttering more at school. so if you found school challenging when you were young, You might still find oral exams and public speaking presentations challenging in post-secondary education.
School may have been a place where you were singled out as different, you might have been bullied, teased, or ridiculed by your peers. And it's not easy to just forget these traumatic experiences now that you're an adult. At work, if you're now out of school and in the workplace, stuttering can pose hurdles in a professional setting.
Job interviews, phone calls, client meetings, and presentations can be daunting. If you avoid these things, it can potentially affect your career advancement. So to play it safe, you might gravitate towards careers where there's no speaking, or at least where speaking is minimized. It is important to understand how your environment impacts you, so that no matter where you are, whether you're at home, school, or work, you can see how your environment affects you and stuttering.
Now the solution isn't avoiding triggers. If there are triggers getting in the way of you living your life to the fullest. These individual triggers need to be dressed with courage and resilience. If you're a sensitive individual, it's crucial to immerse yourself in environments where you can thrive rather than be stuck in survival mode.
I'd like to share a quote with you that says, when a flower doesn't bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower. When you're mindful of your environment. Making sure you're in a supportive one becomes essential. This is where you can seek out nurturing relationships and positive surroundings to encourage your true self to shine.
The third factor is relationships. Tell me. In social interactions and activities, do you find yourself avoiding or keeping your distance? Do you feel intimidated and find yourself stirring more when speaking to people you don't know? Especially authority figures? Can you speak just fine when alone or with a pet?
Oftentimes stuttering only comes out when in relationship to other people. Now, why is that? Well, when it comes to relationships, it's all about emotional safety, which is just as important as physical safety. Emotional insecurity is a feeling of unease, nervousness, and self-consciousness. If you grew up not feeling safe around others, this can leave a lasting impact.
This is where childhood experiences heavily influence our sense of safety in current and future relationships. Emotional insecurity can also be triggered by our own feelings of inferiority. Specifically around stuttering, Okay. Given the stigma that still surrounds stuttering in society, it makes sense that you might still be feeling insecure and emotionally vulnerable in the presence of others. On the flip side, emotional safety is when you feel internally relaxed and at ease with another person. When we feel psychologically safe, we can let our guard down and reveal our authentic selves.
It's important to cultivate emotional safety within relationships. When you experience psychological safety with others, it allows you to take risks, be vulnerable, and make mistakes without fear of judgment, shame, humiliation, or punishment. When you surround yourself with supportive people, places, and experiences, you lay the foundation for your emotional wellbeing, fostering self-assurance and confidence.
The fourth factor is your thoughts. Do you find yourself harshly judging and criticizing yourself when you stutter? Do you engage in negative self-talk about yourself because you stutter. The most powerful tool you have is your mindset, which is shaped by your thought patterns and beliefs. Your mindset plays a significant role in how you perceive yourself and the world around you.
There are two kinds of mindsets. This is when it feels rigid and lack of flexible solutions. If you lean toward negativity with a fixed mindset, it colors your self perception and outlook on others. A growth mindset embraces expensiveness and flexibility.
So if you lean toward positivity with the growth mindset, it allows you to see opportunities in life. In the book, from stuttering to fluency, there is a quote. Speaking at a public meeting will not make you anxious, and stuttering does not make you feel ashamed.
Your thoughts about speaking at a public meeting make you anxious, and your thoughts about stuttering make you feel ashamed. Your thoughts have a tremendous power to impact you, and your thoughts are reinforced by the self-talk you use. It's important to remember what you say to yourself matters even more than how you say it.
Each situation in life is interpreted through your thoughts and beliefs, either about ourselves or what we think others are thinking. It's normal to engage in self-talk, but the crucial difference lies in whether it is positive and constructive or damaging. It is important to be mindful of your thoughts and their impact.
When you embrace a growth mindset and use compassionate self-talk, it empowers you to face challenges such as stuttering with resilience and self-assurance, with the power of words and your thoughts, you can transform your self-perception, build, build self-esteem, and approach life with hope.
All right, let's keep moving. The fifth factor is feelings. When it comes to your feelings, do you find it easy to express them or do you often suppress them? Protecting yourself from the possibility of judgment or being vulnerable? Stuttering goes beyond the mechanics of speech disruptions. It intertwines with complex emotions that shape your experiences.
Let's explore some of the deeper ones you might be experiencing. Shame arises when you believe that stuttering is something to be hidden. Shame leaves you feeling deeply flawed, that something is wrong with you. Shame thrives in isolation, and it can take a toll on your self-esteem and sense of self-worth if you've stuttered since childhood.
Shame tends to be deeply ingrained, and if you're a highly sensitive individual, shame can feel even more intense. Healing from shame is possible, and one way is through positive connections with others.
Fear and anxiety is kept alive. When you avoid speaking situations that are challenging for you. It's biologically impossible to get rid of fear as it serves, as a protective force alerting you to potential physical harm. Even though fear and anxiety are sometimes used interchangeably, there is a difference.
Fear is usually in the immediate and present moment, and anxiety arises from the future triggered by the anticipation and chronic worry of upcoming speaking situations. The trick is to know the difference of real physical harm versus the threat of perceived emotional harm. Notice that I said perceived, which goes back to your thoughts on the situation.
Changing your thoughts will change your feelings. Anger and frustration can also be triggered, stemming from the struggle to speak. Added effort and negative feelings can create even greater disfluency. You might put great pressure and make harsh demands on yourself to control your speech perfectly.
This might sound like I must not stutter or I must have total control over my speech, but in doing so, tension is created in the body only leading to more stuttering. You don't need to try so hard. Give yourself permission to take off the pressure and allow yourself patience to speak. This will naturally release tension in your body.
When you understand and embrace your emotions, it allows you to be your authentic self. To overcome shame, remind yourself of your inherent worthiness. Feelings like fear and anger in itself are not bad. It's about finding positive ways to express your feelings, to release the inner tension that will then increase fluency. When you practice self-compassion and allow yourself to feel your feelings, you empower your true self to shine.
The six factor is body. Let's explore this. When speaking, do you feel relaxed and at ease in your own body. Or do you feel tension and tightness in certain parts? Do you hold your breath or tense your mouth and jaw? This is the physical manifestation at experience of stuttering.
This tension creates speech disruptions like repetitions, blocks, spasms, or prolonged sounds, often accompanied by facial and bodily contortions. These are the visible and audible manifestations of stuttering. I was surprised that when I was in a speech therapy program, how my body works, which includes the brain and nervous system, was never explained to me.
I think this is critical information. It removes the mystery of what is going on in your own body when something is happening, it's essential to recognize that your brain and body are functioning exactly as they were designed to do to protect you. If you've struggled with stuttering for a long time, it becomes a conditioned and automatic reaction and very difficult to stop.
It can feel like stuttering is happening to you, but you need to be conscious of the fact that stuttering is something you do. Stuttering in my experience, is the result of overly self-conscious speech production. For most people, speech is an automatic and unconscious process. The problem that lies with stuttering is speaking, has become conscious and then coped and conditioned in maladaptive ways. A lot of the time, stuttering starts the struggle behavior, but what is the real struggle? Is it really the production of speech or deeper emotional struggles in the body influenced by thoughts and feelings that trigger physiological responses?
Feeling threatened or tense activates the body stress response. These are the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Once any of these stress responses are activated, it's practically impossible to create fluent speech effectively or use speech fluency techniques. Fluid speech requires a relaxed body to be successful.
A relaxed body is only possible through a relaxed mind, which ties again back to our thoughts. It is important to know what is happening in your body when you stutter. There is a lot more going on than just wires crossed up in your brain. When you are empowered with knowledge about your body, you can be kinder to yourself and know that stuttering is something you do, not who you are.
When you understand that stuttering is not a flaw, but a natural adaptation to your environment, this allows you to have more self-compassion.
All right. The seventh and final factor is behavior. Do you find yourself avoiding certain people and situations? Does your fear of stuttering keep you from leaving your comfort zone? I. Your behavior in response to stuttering plays a crucial role in determining your ability to follow through on tasks and achieve your goals.
Behaviors fall into four psychological states or mindsets, comfort, fear, learn, and panic. Most of us are familiar with the concept of having a comfort zone, and it feels good and safe to stay there. If you go too far into the fear zone, it intimidates you from crossing into the learning zone, and if you go too far into the panic zone, you risk becoming stressed and overwhelmed.
Here are some common behaviors with covert and overt. There's often a natural inclination to hide your stutter, covert either hiding your stutter or overt being open about it. It's essential to be aware of the degree to which you hide behind your stutter. I.
Stuttering is a physical habit reinforced over time, which can also come with struggle behaviors. This looks like overcompensating and straining to create sounds while speaking. struggle behaviors create tension and perpetuate the vicious cycle of stuttering.
Secondary behaviors are eye squinting, head jerking, and other bodily movements developed as conditioned reactions to cope with difficult blocks during speech. You might believe that controlling your speech at all costs will solve the problem, but what happens is that excessive effort to gain control actually leads to tension.
Then leads to more stuttering over time, these secondary behaviors can become a barrier to achieving the fluency you want. Avoidance is also a common coping mechanism among individuals. While it may provide you short-term relief, it increases anxiety in the long term. Avoidance creates a cycle of fear, making it harder for you to confront and overcome stuttering.
Then there is self-censorship and self-editing, which are also safety behaviors. This looks like scanning for dangerous words or sounds, or swapping out words at the last second. Verbal crutches and fillers like um, or like may also provide temporary assistance to get you through a stutter.
But once again, these behaviors may seem helpful in the moment, but they reinforce thoughts of stuttering and hinder smooth speech production. It's crucial to recognize these safety behaviors and coping mechanisms. They might seem to help in the short term. But only hinder you over the long run.
Replacing old habits with new positive ones is challenging, but achievable. Understanding the various behaviors behind your stutter can lead you to take positive steps towards increasing fluency. Whew, that was a lot, but now that you know what these factors are, let's put them all together and see how it all works.
Okay. I'm going to show you how these seven fluency factors work together in a real life scenario, what is your personality? You are showing up as your inborn nature. Where are you? You've been asked to lead the meeting and present a report to your team at work. Who is there? You are in a conference room with your boss and coworkers and teammates.
What are you thinking? Oh God, I'm gonna stutter and everyone is gonna think less of me. How are you feeling? Fear, anxiety, stress, overwhelm, anger, resentment, frustration. how does the emotion show up in your body? Your heart rate goes up, you feel muscle, tension, sweating, maybe shallow breathing, holding your breath.
All of this makes it hard to speak. What do you do? Your behavior manifests is stuttering, lack of eye contact. You might distract yourself by shuffling papers or rushing your presentation. This entire sequence adds up to the outcome and results you experience. Does this give you a better idea of how these factors are working together?
When you understand all of these various factors at play, you have so much more to work with in regards to creating and controlling the outcome you want. Change any one of the factors at the beginning of the sequence, and this will change your overall experience. the purpose of these fluency factors is to reduce tension.
the kind of psychological tension that is produced through your thoughts and feelings that manifests as physical tension in your body. When inner conflict on the mental and emotional levels is reduced through various methods, this will naturally reduce tension in the body.
When there is less tension in the body, there is less tension that impacts speech. When there's less tension to create stuttering, there will be less stuttering, meaning more fluency.
The next time you find yourself struggling with your fluency. Here is what you can do. Take a moment to reflect on these seven factors as you ask yourself these questions. Number one, consider your temperament. How does your personality influence your fluency? Two, evaluate the environment. Where are you and how does it impact your speech? Number three, examine your relationships. How do the people around you affect your fluency?
Number four, explore your thoughts. What beliefs and self-talk are influencing your speech? Five, recognize your feelings. How do your emotions play a role in your fluency? Number six, observe your body. What physical tension or reactions are connected to your stuttering?
And number seven, analyze your behavior. How do you respond your stuttering? And are there any safety behaviors or habits that you can address?
Even though I'm at a point where I've gained a high level of fluency, it's not like I've arrived and never affected by any of these factors ever again. Of course, I still have moments where my fluency gets hijacked or I feel rattled, and I experience bumpy moments in my speech. Unlike before where a negative speaking situation would just absolutely derail me and take me down into a dark spiral of guilt and shame.
The difference is that now I have the knowledge and awareness to help me handle whatever comes my way. Now, when stuttering happens, it's. More like speed bumps. So when I hit speed bumps, I get in touch with myself, with my true thoughts and feelings, and look at the meaning I've given to a person or the situation that is bringing up inner tension and conflict within me.
I explore the thoughts, the story that I'm telling myself, and by reframing. In choosing a different story, I changed the outcome of my experience. When you can make sense of what is going on beneath the surface of your stutter, it will no longer have power over you.
I invite you to ask yourself this set of questions. You can use it like a tool to gain self-awareness after a speaking situation where you experience variable stuttering. The purpose of this tool is to help you move through and process your thoughts and feelings around any speaking situation, especially if it was negative.
It's by taking action and going through this process of asking yourself these questions that will help you get more in touch with yourself. When you understand what is going on beneath the surface of your stutter, you will gain much more perspective on yourself and others. You will refrain from beating yourself up and find more compassion and self-acceptance.
Try it for yourself. Let me how it goes. I'd really love to know. Email me herePage@thehappystutterer.com.